Elizabeth Is Missing

I had high hopes for Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey. So many friends on Goodreads and elsewhere have raved about it - even my partner thought it was great - so I am glad to report that I absolutely loved it too. Healey's portrayal of Maud is just perfect. I loved how we see her both from her own perspective and from the point of view of those around her, and the portrayal accepts that her predicament has its amusing moments, but is never malicious. I have two friends currently coping with their own mothers' dementia and Elizabeth Is Missing has given me a powerful insight into how tough caring for someone must be.

Maud's timeslips are nicely written and I liked that sometimes it wasn't immediately apparent whether she was in the present or the past. Also clever was the familiarity with which people such as the policeman at his station greet Maud so, as a reader, I knew that such visits were frequently repeated even though Maud herself has no memory of them. This novel has really opened my eyes to dementia and I found it a frightening prospect to think about. I also found reading the book to be an unexpectedly emotional experience, welling up at several moments.

In my opinion Elizabeth Is Missing is easily a five star read and also an important book that I think should be widely read. As I posted my rating on Goodreads I noticed another author, Anne Goodwin, has an interesting blog post about dementia in literature which also suggests other on-topic novels.

Maybe a bit more towards 3.5 stars...

Do you know Elvis Costello's Veronica? This is the book-length version. With a bit of Memento thrown in for suspense. The great thing about this book is how sensitively it depicts a woman succumbing to dementia - the confusion, the embarrassment at admitting to forgetting, the attempts to avoid that embarrassment by figuring out what's going on based on cues from the environment, the frustration that may lead to aggressive behaviours. The book has a sense of humour about it all, but at the same time gets the reader to feel a bit ashamed about laughing, because we can really empathize with Maud when she's faced with her sighing, eye-rolling daughter.
The not so great thing about this book is that it should never have been as long as it is - it becomes repetitive at some point, and there's a sense that some fairly big chunks could have been edited out without losing anything of significance.

But frankly, it's worth reading this book even if you give up two-thirds of the way it, just for the depiction dementia.